Ethnicity? Tribe?Ethnic Conflict? Tribalism?

What word to use? Does it matter?

In colonial and postcolonial Africa

Southall’s Definition of Tribe, p. 83• “A whole society• with a high degree of self-sufficiency• at a near subsistence level• based on a relatively simple technology• without writing or literature,• politically autonomous• and with its own distinctive language, culture,

and sense of identity.”• family unit—blood line• associated with violence against other groups

• “It was not that people were an undifferentiated mass, but that they were differentiated in many subtle and complex ways for different purposes” (Southall, p. 87)

• “Most Africans moved in and out of multiple identities, defining themselves at one moment as subject to this chief, at another moment as part of this cult, at another moment as part of this clan, and at yet another moment as an initiate in that professional guild” (Ranger, p. 603).

Copperbelt, Zambia

South African mines

Railroads in Africa

Building of railway in French West Africa

Senegalese soldiers behind the Somme, Winter 1916-1917

Independent Africa